Densho Digital Archive - Susumu Yenokida Interview (denshovh-ysusumu-01-0019)

<Begin Segment 19>

RP: And what do you remember destroying? Any particular items? Mostly related to Japanese culture?

SY: Right, right.

RP: So the kendo equipment... a lot of people...

SY: Radios, radios.

RP: Radios. A picture of the emperor. Some people had a picture of the emperor...

SY: How did you know that? [Laughs]

RP: I don't know. Just popped into my head.

SY: I think have, I have the framework of that picture. The frame at home.

RP: Really?

SY: But I don't have the, the actual picture of the emperor because we didn't want that in there. But then we buried that also. Yeah.

RP: Uh-huh. You just buried it. Some people burned things. So it's still out there somewhere?

SY: I guess. But it's gone, it's gone. Yeah. But we had a rifle, a twenty-two rifle. It was... I think today it would be a prize weapon. It was a twenty-two rifle. It had an octagon barrel made by Remington and it was accurate. My brother, both of my brothers, they were, they were accurate shooters. You know, they'd be, there'd be hawks, they'd come and get the chicks and my brother says, "They got my chicks and I'm gonna get him. He's flying away." Bang, bang. In flight, with a twenty-two rifle. My brother Min, when we were working over there in Terminus, he was working for another farmer, and he was digging what they call spud ditches with a machine and then it'll make somewhere close to an 8-inch ditch, somewhere close to 30 inches deep. And then you're making all that... machine is picking it up and then it's, it can't make a furrow over here so they're, they're fanning it out like this and it's throwing it maybe 20 feet on both sides. You got maybe 40 feet of fan, dirt that's just flying. And when you're doing that, you're frightening all the wildlife away from you. And he had a wood... one day, years, years later, after going from camp, we went to an auction. And he found a .22 Colt Woodsman there and he says, "I'm gonna buy that thing." And he bought it for thirty-two dollars at that time. It's a treasure now. But he was good enough even with that pistol, he could bring home pheasants with that, on the fly. Where he learned to fly -- where he learned to shoot that is Cortez Growers Association. During the years that when he was growing up, he used to be the night man for the association. And those days the rats were... you know how big they would get? Why, they'd be running on the rafters. See, below the rafters and then, well, mostly on the rafters. And he had borrowed a Iris and Johnson from somebody and he, he'd pepper at those things and he'd knock 'em out with the pistol. That's where he got... he learned to shoot.

RP: Really?

SY: And when we were farming over there in Terminus, we would flood some, some ground and then it'd be foggy, and then ducks would come in. And we'd be standing back to back, and we got real good at this. He says, "On the right, coming in." And you could hear the birds go by and he'd shoot. He only had maybe two seconds of sight time.

RP: Right.

SY: And bango.

RP: Really.

SY: We were, we were really good at it. Yeah.

RP: Terminus... where is this located in terms of...

SY: Terminus is out of...

RP: Is that on the delta?

SY: Out on the delta.

RP: Okay.

SY: From Lodi going toward Rio Vista.

RP: Oh, Rio Vista, okay.

SY: And it's the first delta lying on the right and left side. That's called Terminus, before the McCullough Bridge. There's a huge bridge over there. Yeah.